Child A is raised with love and fun, empathy and humor, and that’s the view of life he learns automatically. Bad things happen, there are trials and ordeals, can even be tragedy, but deep down he will always have the expectation that things will turn out for the best, that goodness will prevail, that somewhere above him an authority of virtue and reason, learning and fulfillment, is in charge and will lead him to ultimate good. He will learn, so deeply that it’s part of him, an ethic of being good to others, of fairness and kindness and empathy. Even studying history and philosophy and science will not really tarnish this underlying belief. Cynicism and corruption encountered later in life, no matter how much they disturb him and even for a time disillusion him, cannot completely destroy his underlying faith in the good.

Child B doesn’t get the love and fun and empathy and humor. His infancy and childhood are instead full of uncertainty, need, often dread and disappointment. Even if he is cared for physically, an element of trust is missing. Whether he is ignored or blamed, he grows up with his own understanding of how things are. His attitude will be one of wariness, anger, and the conviction that he’d better grab whatever he can.

Both will grow up amid varying experiences, and both will continue to be influenced by what happens to them and also by how they react. They will in effect teach others how to treat them. Later, they will raise their own children in accordance with how their lives have been so far, depending on what events and associations have tempered that childhood beginning. But the two opposing beginnings remain.

How, Child A grows up to say, can we not feed the hungry, shelter everyone, legislate kindness? Who can begrudge sharing abundance with those who have nothing? But Child B grows up to say no, that’s foolish and deluded and naive. Both sides believe that they are right and that the other side is missing the point somehow. Each side makes caricatures of the other as they oppose each other in politics and life.

Learning is random. Birth environment is luck. All of us are taught how to be, by what happens to us and what we observe. All of us have an effect on those around us. As adults, Child A can make the world a better place and Child B can wreck it. Both are making new and far-reaching scientific discoveries, spreading ever-faster and wider influence.

Are we, moving toward something, or is this the way things will always be?

What if I had skinny genes—not blue jeans but the kind of genes you’re born with?  What would it be like to be naturally thin?  What if I were slender and willowy, the way tall women like me are supposed to be?  What if I were like my mom, who always had low blood pressure and lost weight when she was stressed?  What if I had a fast metabolism so I couldn’t bear to sit still and could eat anything I wanted and never gain an ounce? Continue reading →

I grew up thinking men were superior to women.  I was taught to think that, not only by the way our entire society was arranged but by the way my mother treated my father, with trust, admiration, deference, and the best of whatever was on the table.   It wasn’t so much a power thing as it was a worthiness thing.  Girls of my generation were led to believe that men were wiser as well as stronger, that they would carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, fight the wars, make the decisions, and we women need only worry about matters of the home.  Men didn’t cry, men didn’t show neediness, men—the men in my life at least—treated women with gentleness and courtesy and an entirely different kind of respect from the kind they showed for other men.

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I got an inspirational email yesterday about a college student who argued with his atheistic professor concerning the existence of God. The student said that there’s no such thing as darkness, just the absence of light; no such thing as cold, just the absence of heat; and finally, no such thing as evil, just the absence of good, or love, or God. The pupil turned out to be Albert Einstein.

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I have read Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s book Mindsight once and then again, and I still keep it handy for reference. Right now I’m making my way through some of his other books, though they were written for professionals so that much in them is beyond my frame of reference. The author has a gift for making the difficult comprehensible so I’m learning.

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